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A Look at Anti-Municipal-Broadband Marketing

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday September 02 2014, @05:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the trust-us dept.

prospectacle writes:

The "Center for Public Integrity" has collected some examples of the robocalls, direct-mail brochures and newspapers ads that are being used by telcos and lobby groups to encourage people to vote against municipal broadband initiatives in their area.

They emphasise the "government takeover of telecommunications" and "risking taxpayers money" aspects of these proposed municipal networks. I didn't see any mention of the far greater risk, which is that these networks might work out exactly as intended and therefore take revenue away from the companies who are sponsoring these "no" campaigns. But then again, the examples posted are not the complete brochures, so I can't say for certain this wasn't mentioned.

Does anyone have real life experience with municipal broadband that they can share? Should we be thanking these companies for spending their hard-earned money warning us of the dangers?

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:56PM (#88522)

    So why do I have phones lines from 1930s ?? Right, phones companies don't want to upgrade anything.

    I don't see what you are talking about.

    1970s - people may just have phones lines
    2000+ - people would like to have FIOS

    You upgrade the latest by changing end-equipment, not the cable itself. So I don't know what you are talking about. There is ONE upgrade. Copper twisted pair to fiber. Done. So why do I still have copper wires that were put in in 1930s around here? Why hasn't my utility that charged me over $10,000 for "services" over last 15 years has not upgrade this to fiber?

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  • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:59AM

    by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:59AM (#88718) Homepage Journal

    So why do I have phones lines from 1930s ??

    You don't... They got overhauled when they switched to touch-tone. They got overhauled when ISDN and/or 56K modems came along. They got overhauled when they added DSL capabilities.

    Just because you don't see the major changes at the plug, doesn't mean they aren't happening.

    Copper twisted pair to fiber. Done.

    Optical fiber, like copper, comes in several ever-increasing capacities. OM1, OM2, OM3, etc. If you'd gotten upgraded to fiber back when OM1 was high-tech, you'd be maxing out its speeds, and would demand a complete overhaul, which would require a complete network teardown all over again.

    Being angry and ignorant isn't a good combination.

    --
    Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.